One of the many strange and totally un-evidenced claims of the Discovery Institute is that they have some kind of filter which reveals the presence of design. We’ve written about it many times before — see The Discoveroids and Their Magic Filter, and most recently Aliens & the Discoveroids’ Design Filter.
The Discoveroids’ magic filter is the topic of a new post at their creationist blog: University of Alabama “Space Archaeologist” Seeks Evidence of Intelligent Design. It was written by Sarah Chaffee (whom we call “Savvy Sarah”). Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis:
Sarah Parcak has been called a new Indiana Jones. Associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Parcak pioneered the use of satellite imagery to discover ruins, tombs, and more. Her field, “space archaeology,” sounds like an oxymoron, but the technique is downright effective.
The Smithsonian awarded her their 2016 American Ingenuity Award and reported that “she and her team have expanded the civilization’s [Egypt’s] known scope, spotting more than 3,000 ancient settlements, more than a dozen pyramids and over a thousand lost tombs, and uncovered the city grid of Tanis, of Raiders of the Lost Ark fame.”
How can the Discoveroids take advantage of her work? You’ll see soon enough. Savvy Sarah says:
She’s looking for one thing — design. [Hee hee!] Parcak begins with research. She looks at maps, ancient and modern, and of every kind, of the area. Then she examines satellite imagery, primarily from the military. “Any discovery in remote sensing rests on hundreds of hours of deep, deep study. Before looking at satellite imagery of a cemetery or a pyramid field, you have to already understand why something should be there,” Parcak told Smithsonian.
Here’s the Smithsonian article: Space Archaeologist Sarah Parcak Uses Satellites to Uncover Ancient Egyptian Ruins. Somehow, Parcak doesn’t mention that she’s using the Discoveroids’ filter. Nevertheless, Savvy Sarah tells us:
Parcak is looking for complex and specified information — and the approach is paying off.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Check out Wikipedia’s article on Specified complexity — “a concept proposed by William Dembski and used by him and others to promote the pseudoscientific arguments of intelligent design.” They say:
Specified complexity is what Dembski terms an “explanatory filter” which can recognize design by detecting “complex specified information” (CSI).
Whatever that means. Savvy Sarah goes on and on, claiming that what Parcak does is the same thing the Discoveroids are doing when they claim to detect the handiwork of the intelligent designer — blessed be he! But it’s not quite the same — Parcak locates verifiable ruins, while the Discoveroids never accomplish anything.
Here’s the end of the Discoveroid post:
Parcak has been named in Foreign Policy‘s list of “100 Leading Global Thinkers,” meaning that she’s onto something pretty big, riding a wave of the future: design research. I wonder where design detection applied to biological and cosmic origins will take us in the years to come.
Your Curmudgeon will take a wild guess and try to answer Savvy Sarah’s question. Hey, Sarah: Discoveroid style design “research” will take you nowhere, which is where you are now, and where you will always remain.
Copyright © 2017. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
• 
• 
• • • • • • • • •
. . Permalink for this article